rúllu

shapeshifter. groundbreaker. nap-taker.

the least danish thing made in denmark.

danish design principles include tradition and reduction, improving on the good, reducing for minimalism. rúllu doesn’t have a starting point, or an ending point. there is no predecessor to improve on, there is only the next iteration.

practical skills

contributors

collection

leatherworking

iterative sketching

modelmaking

design autopsy

erling christoffersen

peter johansen

dögg gudmundsdóttir

bokeh furniture lab

generative ai disclosure.

openai’s chatgpt 4o generative ai model was used in this project for:

information gathered on human spine anatomy ergonomics for slat width and spacing.
iterative critique on mechanical aspects & proportional dimensions.
artificial intelligence was not used in any capacity for creative decision-making or concept generation.

now this. now that.

rúllu’s “l-frame” construction and tambour enables countless forms of furniture, swappable between forms in 5 minutes or less. forms range from a lounge to a daybed to an armchair, all with the same parts and construction method.

how many forms can rúllu take? the answer is unknown. when reconstructing the chair, it invites new form experimentation based upon the same principles of suspension and configuration, with the tambour itself being usable as a floor mat or beach blanket.

a chair in suspense.

a furniture project doesn’t truly start until it’s called “ambitious” or “bold”. some say that i seek this reaction. those people could not be more correct. if there’s a doubt in a product’s probability of existence, that’s where i begin.

rúllu wasn’t constructed until the night before our final critique, and even after then tensions were high. all of these puns are intended.

again. and again. and again.

if i said any of my ideas made sense at the start, i was lying. before the current (8th) iteration, there were roughly 20 different directions. rúllu is not anywhere near a “finished” state, but is a show of perseverance for the unusual and experimental.

rúllu, in it’s state is more of a proof of concept (and comfort). there are staggering amounts of improvements and optimizations to be made in almost every way. which makes it both an exciting and arduous project to revisit.

processwork.

bowling pins.

one thing that needs to be understood about my brain is that it does not stop. and thus, the idea of a chair that could be a reasonable excuse to get better at lathing. i still want to make this, honestly.
iceland.

iceland is such a beautiful place, and their ethos and care for the earth inspired me to design something that works with natural adjustment, repositioning and the human body. it also inspired the name.
københavn.

it’s hard to fit an entire city into a single slide, so i’m having multiple. every single day in the typical overcast, gloomy weather, i was doing something new.
a designer's paradise.

if you’ve ever asked yourself if there’s just too much chair in your life, you’ve been in copenhagen. there’s such a quantity of furniture showrooms, going to different ones every day.
flat-pack fanatic.

sometimes the decisions i make are actually quite straightforward… sometimes. what better place to investigate flat-pack technique and joinery than ikea?
kanel stol.

the first idea my professors truly loved was a tiny sketch in the top corner of my page. kanel stol, “cinnamon stool.” a piece of veneer spiraled to form a flat pack stool. i wanted to do something else.

note: stol means chair, so in danish, it’d be kanel skammel, which sounds like helter skelter.
Western denmark.

as part of our short study tour, we went around western denmark. to trapholt, ribe, and other museums, as well as the factories of fritz hansen and carl hansen & søn.
mini-making.

erling & peter had a strong emphasis on modelmaking and hands-on form exploration. did i need to make every slat individually measured to scale to the tenth of a millimeter? no. did i do it anyways? absolutely.
full-scale cardboard.

with a very loose grasp on gaps between vertebrae, i began my cardboard mockup by precisely measuring and cutting 42 cardboard slats. this was only a taste of the tedium of the full-scale plywood final. i had no idea.
"ian will love this place."

källemo is an experimental furniture manufacturer and archive for limited runs of wild ideas. they’re based in värnamo, sweden. of course i want to work at this place.
somewhere, elsewhere.

on our long study tour, we visited the famous paimio sanatorium, a gesamtkunstwerk by alvar aalto, finnish design legend, and my primary inspiration.
olla normaali.

finnish for “be normal,” ironically written with a shoe in the gravel in my final hours in helsinki. this, or the departure from this became the ethos for rullu.
be abnormal. be weird. it makes for interesting work.
rolf would be proud.

during this semester, i’ve done the most drawing i have ever have in my life, i always thought i was terrible at drawing, i still do. but the constant practice showed that i was slowly getting better.
elsewhere, everywhere.

berlin, then amsterdam. i visted the temporary bauhaus archive, and listened to good jazz. doing notepad still-lifes of what caught my eye. cities, living.
first leatherwork.

i bought 2 strips of 4mm thick 6×220cm leather, along with a single hole punch. i finished with a bunch of holes in a belt, and something resembling a hole punch.
the human cnc.

most designers and engineers can look at my chair and recognize that it’s meant to be made by a machine. i learned that trying to make equal parts looks very jank.
i fixed it!

the first time i sat down in this chair, my butt hit the floor. we (me and my classmates) hadn’t properly secured the tambour to, well, anything. not my proudest moment.
crit.

i prefaced my presentation by showing the events that occured the night before, which wasn’t a good idea. but i had done something completely new, and it was comfy.
the end?

i recognize what’s good and bad about this design. it’s the biggest risk i’ve ever taken on a project, and it almost didn’t work. the shoot broke it even more. i love this funky chair and i’m so proud of it, but it’s too niche and complex to make to be my capstone. a capstone should be for everyone.

i’d love to revisit it someday.
ode to scandiavnia.

this was a period of my life i will never get to experience again in the same way, and i try to live it within me every day. im grateful for everyone i met along the way, and i intend to come back for another adventure soon.
thank you for reading.
-ian